Exodus ch. 12 v. 14: “Ye shall celebrate [it],” says the Lord, “as a solemnity to the Lord, in your generations, with a perpetual worship.” And (v. 17): “Ye shall keep this day in your generations by a perpetual rite.” And again (v. 24): “Keep this word [as a] statute for thee, and for thy sons, unto eternity.” I say. 1. After—
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I. After this third [Passover] in Gilgal, [it] is established [that] the Passover, up to the times of CHRIST the Lord, was twice interrupted for some years. For when, in the time of the Babylonian captivity, the Temple had been destroyed and burned — but afterward occupied by Antiochus Epiphanes, and impurified and profaned by the filth of idols — no paschal lamb was immolated in it by the priests. And therefore (1 Macc. ch. 1 v. 39): “Its sanctification is desolated like a solitude. The days of its feast are turned into mourning; its sabbaths into reproach.” For [it] was said above (q. 21 & 24) [that] the immolation of the Passover had to be done in the Temple.
II. This Jewish Passover ceased entirely after the coming of CHRIST the Lord, when the Temple was overthrown by Titus. And the cause is plain from the [things] said; and to this Rupert (on Amos) refers that [saying] which, in him, the Prophet (ch. 8) speaks, the Lord [saying]: “The end is come upon my people Israel. I will not again add, that I should pass through them.” “For indeed,” says [Rupert], “from [the time] when the blood of the lamb of God was poured out by the Jews — the blood of Christ, the Son of God — no longer is received before God the blood of the lamb of those brute cattle; but [those] which have been signed with the sign of the blood of Christ, [with] the seal of the cross of the Son of God, those are the house of Israel. But that people, which formerly was called Israel, is reckoned among the Egyptians, because [it] does not have this sign; and therefore, ‘I will not add,’ [he] says, ‘that I should pass through it’ — and [it] is to be understood [as]: ‘but I will strike, just as of old the land of Egypt, so now every soul of an unbelieving man, and [of one] doing evil — both Jews and Greeks; nay, sooner and more harshly the Jews than the Greeks.’” And truly, by that same overthrow of Jerusalem, the sacred [rites], ceremonies, and religions of the Jews [were] utterly cut off — so that, to those keeping them thereafter, they would be noxious and death-bearing.
III. The true Passover was CHRIST the Lord, whose unbloody immolation was indeed on that same day on which [he] ate that old Passover, and instituted the new Passover, the sacrament of the Eucharist — as [is] proved from St. Paul (1 Corinth. 5) [by] Bellarmine (bk. 1 On the Mass, ch. 7). For [the Apostle] says, concerning the banquet which immolation is wont to follow: “Our Passover, Christ, is immolated. Therefore let us feast in the unleavened [bread] of sincerity and truth.” And the same [thing] testify Tertullian (bk. 4 against Marcion), Cyprian (On the unity of the Church), D. Ambrose (on Luke ch. 1), Greg. Nazianzen (oration 2 On the Pascha), Gaudentius (tract 2 on Exodus), D. Jerome (on Matthew ch. 26), Chrysostom (homily On the betrayal of Judas, & hom. 83 on Matthew), D. Augustine (bk. 2 against Petilianus, ch. 37), S. Leo (sermon 7 On the Passion), Isichius [Hesychius] (bk. 2 on Leviticus), B. Gregory (hom. 22 on the Gospel), V. Bede (on Luke 22), B. Anselm (on Matt. 26), Rupert (bk. 2 on Exodus, ch. 6). And of this matter [there is] a little more below (q. 38). The bloody immolation of the same [Passover] was on the altar of the cross — of which St. John (ch. 19 v. 36): “These [things] are done, that the Scripture might be fulfilled: ‘Ye shall not break a bone of it.’” For what had been said of the typical and figurative lamb (Exod. 12 v. 46), this in the figured and true paschal lamb, Christ the Lord, was observed [that not a bone was broken]. The author of q. 21 in [pseudo-]Augustine (Tom. 4, q. 2) wishes [that] no Passover was ever celebrated by the Israelites such as the law prescribed first and to the letter. For [he] thinks [that] a lamb was prescribed which would be at the same time both sheep and goat [ovis et haedus]. But [there] was never any of this kind found. “For [it] discords,” [he] says, “that the common offspring of these animals [be] by that very nature a conjunction.” But truly such a lamb was Christ—
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—[such a lamb] was Christ. For [he] was “of the sheep,” because “of the just”; “and of the goats,” because “of sinners according to the flesh” [he] was born. Whence also that [author] subjoins: “This is the only lamb who is sought; and who, while [he is] no more [that] which is once slain, [is] no more, according to the truth, [that] which — once celebrated [and] perfected — that Passover shows.” But [that] this interpretation — concerning a lamb consisting of sheepish and goatish natures — is false, is plain from the [things] said (q. 19 & 21); and [there] is talk [there] of only the bloody immolation.
IV. But this Passover, as regards the unbloody immolation, is daily in the Christian Church, and will be up to the last times of the world; because Christ the Lord is “a priest unto eternity,” through his ministers the priests, “according to the order of Melchizedek” (Ps. 109; & Heb. 5 v. 6) [by] Bellarmine (bk. 1 On the Mass, ch. 6); nor [will] this “perpetual [iuge] sacrifice” be taken away before Antichrist rages (Daniel 12) [by] Bellarmine (bk. 3 On the Roman Pontiff, ch. 7).
V. The memory of the bloody Passover is [kept] by this unbloody Passover in the Christian Church, perpetual and daily — but [also] by the sacred anniversary day of the Parasceue [Good Friday] and of the Lord’s Resurrection. And [it] was, from the very beginning of the Church, always [so], and up to the consummation will be always [so]. That former [thing], one of the English Innovators dared either to deny or to call into doubt — Thomas Lydiat (Treatise On the forms of years, ch. 19, p. 266) — and [he] wishes [that], first after the overthrow of the Jerusalem Temple, the Passover began to be celebrated by the Asian Christians in imitation of the Jews. But [he] is refuted, first, from the Apostles’ canon 8; then from this, that — as [it were] concerning a matter which had proceeded from Christ the Lord and been propagated by the Apostles — the Nicene Council sanctioned concerning the Pascha (in Eusebius, bk. 5, history, ch. 25; & bk. 3, On the life of Constantine); D. Athanasius (epistle On the Synods of Ariminum and Seleucia); D. Epiphanius (heresy 70 & 75). The latter [thing] is plain, because it looks to the integrity and perfection of the Christian worship, which will not cease except at the ending of this world. See Bellarmine (bk. 3, On the worship of the saints, ch. 11).
VI. The Jewish Passover seems, in some manner, to be renewed at the end of the world, in the time of Antichrist — because their temple will then be rebuilt (2 Thess. 2); and [this] indicate Irenaeus (bk. 5), Hippolytus (oration On the consummation), S. Martin (in Sulpicius, bk. 2), Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechesis 15), D. Hilary (on Matt. 25), D. Ambrose (on Luke 21), Damascene (bk. 4, ch. 28), D. Chrysostom, Sodalius, and many others (on 2 Thess.) [by] Bellarmine (bk. 3 On the Roman Pontiff, ch. 13).
VII. The Jews indeed keep the Passover today, but “without a Passover” — or, without the sacrificial lamb: [it is] altogether empty and false, since the lamb of which that was a figure of the future [Christ] is now present. And [there] will be [more] of this below (q. 39). [It] is [now] clear.
VIII. The perpetual worship and rite of the Passover [is] expounded in a twofold way by D. Augustine (on Exod. q. 18; on Gen. 41; & in the book against the Priscillianists): [first] by the reasoning of the thing signified — which is CHRIST, the eternal Passover of the true Israelites, and [their] joy; [second] by the reasoning of time. For if in some manner [it] be long and long-lasting, [it] is wont in Scripture to be called, in Hebrew, holam [ʿolam]; in Greek αἰών [aiōn]; in Latin saeculum, or perpetuum. For thus also (Deut. 15) [it] is said [that] someone is “a servant to someone in saeculum [forever]”; (Exod. 21) “in sempiternum [into the everlasting].” And this latter exposition [is] truer and more accommodated—
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—[more] accommodated, as Abulensis discusses (on Exod. ch. 22, q. 18).